By Jack
As the story goes it was early in 2011, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta walked into Obama’s office in the White House and said, “I have good news and bad news.” Obama nervously replies, Uh, okay so what’s, uh, the bad news? “The bad news sir is Mullah Omar (the Taliban leader) is being treated at a hospital in southern Pakistan, specifically this would be the Aga Khan University Hospital, Room 401, in Karachi.” Ummm…well, that [is] bad alright. So, what’s the good news? “The good news is he IS being treated in a Pakistan hospital!” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist, but this is a true story, sans my embellishment).
Omar died from undisclosed causes about two weeks later. I’m thinking it was probably due to an infection like 1 in every 25 patients gets in U.S. hospitals. Except Paki’s don’t have the same super drugs we do and their infection/death rate is much higher.
Back in 2011 the information on Omar was given to Pakistan Intelligence Service, but of course they didn’t act on it. Maybe without Pink Ladies they couldn’t find room 401?
(Anyone still think the Paki’s would have acted on the information we discovered about Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts? He was hiding in plain sight near Pakistan’s version of West Point. )
We didn’t know Omar died until two weeks ago, Afghan officials had to tell us! That’s a bit of an insult to our intelligence agencies. We have spent roughly $80 billion dollars on our intelligence gathering since 9/11 (that’s about 100,000 times more than the total net worth of Afghanistan).
It seems like the primitive Taliban should not have been able to keep Omar’s death a secret from us for over two years. But, we’re not alone, for the last 2 years the ordinary Taliban fighters thought they were carrying out the orders of their beloved Mullah Omar, when in reality it was Mullah Mansoor. Can’t imagine they will like being deceived, guess we’ll see how the news goes over soon enough.
When it comes to a counterterrorism partnership, this 2011 fiasco demonstrates the competing agendas between us and our pals the Pakistani’s. We obviously can’t trust them and we never could. But, lets be real, Pakistan is in a tough spot when it comes terrorism. They are so infiltrated with nutcase Muslims, Taliban and Al Qaeda they could easily fall into civil war if they get to cozy with us. Teetering just short of civil war, they’re constantly subject to terrorist threats and they have to make concessions all the time. So there you go, another unreliable partner in Islamic counter-terrorism. Ad Pakistan to the growing list, of Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, to name but a few.
In closing, we don’t know much about the new guy, Mansoor. We know he’s about 40 and that he came from the Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. This is the heart of Taliban country. Prior to being Omar’s chief deputy, he was Afghanistan’s Aviation Minister. But, beyond that we don’t know much about him or his family.
Frank Church helped to dismantle our country’s intelligence services and certainly hasn’t gotten any better under Obumble.